Every Time Traveler Has a Secret

Every time traveler has a secret. For some it is complex, for many it is regret. Who else would abandon the present for a reality that isn’t their own? I will admit I collect these secrets. People confide in me, and I try to be worthy of that trust. When Lois Kent, Q42, first told me she had lost a child I told her I was sorry and I warned her against traveling back to try to change the past.

Lois went back just far enough to save her son. She screamed and railed at the doctor who, in her timeline, had given up too soon on her infant. She did this as her other self, her past self, lay scarcely conscious in the delivery room, as her husband, her past husband, looked on, astonished, as an older version of his wife screamed and was taken from the room by security. The baby was saved. But what then?

The timeline diverged. Where was our Lois to go? She could not stay there, pitted against her younger self in a battle to decide who should raise the child. Most time travelers will tell you it is a difficult thing, getting along with yourself. Lois could not come back here. This timeline is too painful, though she does feel some relief knowing her child exists in some form of reality.

I am posting this story here because, at a meeting a few weeks ago, she has asked me to. She doesn’t want the secret any longer. Those of you who know Lois (Q42) know she has spent years studying and cataloging the alternate works of Hilda Belcher, a breif friend to Georgia O’Keefe, and highly talented painted. She posts many of her found works at her webs site redacted.